Human Resources committee  You could argue that there's been an increase in crime for different reasons. A lot of crime in Ireland is related to drugs and drug trafficking, drug addiction and whatever, and there's been a significant increase in that in Ireland. That has helped to increase, perhaps, more se

Human Resources committee  I'd like to just quickly supplement that from Kevin. We have a money advice service, which, again, we will send you details on. I won't delay any further, but you might be interested in that.

Human Resources committee  I think we do have some. One of our categories is “urban and rural disadvantaged”, and the rural is an important one. First of all, it's a question of looking at the population mix. There's a much higher proportion of older people and younger people in rural communities. The mid

Human Resources committee  You've certainly asked a lot of questions. No, I think we've covered most of the ground, certainly from my perspective. I don't know if my colleagues would want to add anything.

Human Resources committee  I will make one very quick point. Possibly it's more of a political dimension than whatever. I have to say that we mentioned the minister, but really, there was a commitment from the very top. I've sat with my minister around the table at cabinet committee meetings chaired by t

Human Resources committee  I suppose to some extent social inclusion is a dimension of it, but as Tim said, there's no single indicator in terms of poverty. I mentioned two. I mentioned basic deprivation, which targets those most in need. Then you have relative poverty, which more than likely targets ine

Human Resources committee  I think one of the things we have learned through the process is that there will always be very substantial resources devoted to combatting poverty and social exclusion. I think we'd be confident, hopefully, that we'll be able to maintain in real terms the resources that are curr

Human Resources committee  I think it's fair to say that—you know, we don't want in any way to be unfair to previous generations—there was always a strong commitment to tackling poverty, but it was being tackled in a very diverse way. The people involved were not working together in a coordinated, integrat

Human Resources committee  Well, I think what I will do in relation to the first two questions is supply you with the information in terms of other countries and the benchmarks and whatever. In terms of locally based solutions, at the local authority level we have social inclusion units coordinating the a

Human Resources committee  Just to come back, although it's not entirely related to your question, we have a similar study going on with older people as well. The aim is to try to, again, track their development and see what were the various influences that had an impact on them, both positively and negati

Human Resources committee  In terms of the change in target, I suppose when the targets were set initially it demonstrated that we didn't really fully understand the level of poverty there was, the level of basic poverty. Then when we got up-to-date figures a few years later, we discovered, actually, that

Human Resources committee  First of all, in very general terms, I suppose we learn from our experience and from the experience abroad what are the various changes needed in terms of child development. The concentration is clearly on child care, but good quality child care, particularly if there are problem

Human Resources committee  I suppose one of the major difficulties—and it is an ongoing one—is to get departments to adopt a wider perspective. Government departments or ministries are still largely focused on their own area of responsibility. This has a silo effect, as we often refer to it here, whereby t

Human Resources committee  No. First of all, we're very conscious of the difference in scale between Ireland and Canada. We come up against that, needless to say, in the European Union as well, where we'd have 80 million Germans and 56 million U.K. people and so on. Sometimes we're conscious that what mi

Human Resources committee  Very quickly, then, in terms of lone parents, the main aim for lone parents is to reconcile their work and care for children. So we do find that, quite rightly, their priority will be the care of children, but they will want, at the same time, to develop a career. Of course, the